The Officer’s Club
July 8th, 2007 by Torstein Schiøtz Worren
The title of this post gives a feel of times long gone when a colonial administrator could lounge under a parasol, a gin tonic in his hand, and know that the Empire was safe and sound, as the sun would never set. Nothing could be further from the truth at Sana’a’s Officers’ Club.
The Club is indeed a walled compound for a select group of people, but for a handful of riyals, anyone can gain access, including us infidel foreigners. The Club was set up as a fringe benefit for the armed forces’ officers and their families where they could socialise among their own kind and have a meal and a water pipe and chew their qat in peace and away from the dirty crowds of self-employed.
Yet, hard times probably fell on the officers, or maybe they got tired of just seeing the same faces. In any case, admission is now open to anyone who can pay for it. Us foreigners, the males that is, usually go there for two reasons: the gym and the pool.
The gym, although not the only one in Sana’a from what I hear, has not received any new equipment since about 1990. But it is still a decent gym considering we’re in Yemen and with a little imagination one can do a decent workout, although forget the stretching as there are no mats. Then again, stretching is for wimps and not for big men wanting to build muscle (at least if one wants to become like the men in the pictures on the walls – I bet you all know the type).
The best part of being in the gym is to watch the very few Yemenis that actually use it. My first hypothesis, from experience elsewhere in the Middle East, is that a lot of those using it are gay. This is because in the traditional culture that is still very predominant, being fit and caring about how the body looks, is very alien. Simply, a rich man should have a belly as he can afford to be fat. Being skinny is the look of a poor man who can only eat meat once a year for Eid. However, to be fair, there are also those who have lived abroad or are adopting amore Western lifestyle and who genuinely care about staying in shape, including the overweight ones who have been told by their doctor to loose weight or die.
For whatever the reason, coming there does not mean that they know how to work all the machines, and especially not when they cycle. As many have no idea how to work the controls, they spin like crazy with no resistance whatsoever and get bored rather quickly. If they do understand the controls, a life of sitting on their arses chewing qat every afternoon means that a usual cardio-workout lasts about five minutes.
Now, the greatest exhibit is the swimming pool. It is actually a great pool; Olympic size and with five diving boards up to ten metres high. However, again, as Sana’s is more than 200 kilometres from the nearest coast and at an altitude of 2000 metres, one would never expect a local to know how to swim, and most of them can’t either. As in the gym, there are exceptions, but most of them have the look of coastal Yemenis and not of the tribal mountain sort.
Not knowing how to swim doesn’t mean you can’t have fun, though, which is why the pool is like a big circus, especially in the weekends. It is full of young and not-so-young people pushing each other into the bushes, into the pool, sitting on each others’ heads and holding their friends under until they almost drown, to the great amusement of everybody. Quite a few of them are genuinely afraid of water and are hysterically panicking when their friends grab them and throw them into the pool. Punching, biting and scratching are only a few of the weapons being used to avoid the deep-end.
There are always those wearing those life-vests that will keep you afloat even when one of your friends throw themselves on top of you. Once, when I was visiting two years ago, there was a guy of about 20, with a big beard indicating religious studies wearing one of those life-vests and clinging to the side of the pool while his teeth were clattering from the cold caused by lack of movement. In a moment of bravado, he let go of the side, and with eyes closed, splashed around like a cat drowning, all while shouting ‘God is great, God is great, God is great.’ On re-attaching himself to the edge he thanked the almighty from saving him from certain death.
I do admire the courage of some of the locals in the pool, though, who, despite their lack of swimming skills, make impressive attempts at swimming. Although a few of them end up swimming in circles with their eyes closed and always look surprised when they haven’t moved a metre from where they started, the others get by with their own techniques. The best part for everybody there is the 10-metre diving board. Wanting to be brave and goaded on by their friends, climb to the top only to realise how ridiculously high up they actually are, and climb shame-faced down to the 3-metre board. This happens to most people. But then there are a few who place their life in God’s hands or place absolutely no value in their own life, or those swimming the pool below for that matter. To the cheer of everyone present, they lunge from the top and into the depths below with hands and feet spinning. One guy, apparently scared to death, but not able to face the taunting of his friends should he climb back down, seemed to faint as he stood on the tip looking down to the surface below, and just tipped over the edge and hit the pool, stomach first, in a huge splash. He was helped out and seemed to survive on the adrenaline rush of actually going through with it.
The life-guard on the side of the pool wears a training suit and has probably never been in the pool, and I bet he can’t even swim as he got his job because his cousin works in the reception. But that is of no importance as he has one of those floating rings that he can toss into the pool should anybody be in trouble.
This weekend when my flatmate Josh and I were on our way out, we both for some reason salaamed a guy our age coming in the opposite direction. He looked really holy with a long black beard with the upper lip shaved in the imamic fashion. He answered the salaam and asked us with a British accent where we were from. It turned out that this guy London, of undecided descent, but not Yemeni according to himself, was studying Arabic in Sa’da. Now, for those of you who are unfamiliar with this town, it is in the middle of the area that has been plagued by civil war between a runaway Zaydi (shi’a sect) group and the government on and off since 2004. This war has been especially ferocious since January of this year.
On asking him about this, he said that he had been studying in a centre in the middle of the city called Dammaj for several years and that the war was outside the city limits and therefore of no consequence for him and the other students. The only problem was that the sound of explosions would sometimes disturb one’s concentration. A nice enough chap, yet our conversation was only in passing.
I came across the name Dammaj a few days later while reading up on news from Yemen and it turns out that this is a Sunni enclave in the predominantly Zaydi/Shi’a town with thousands of students. It is especially popular with foreign converts and Muslims who have grown up in the West. This was confirmed by an English language online forum I also came across that discussed places to study Arabic and Islam abroad (Afghanistan and Pakistan being favourites) that said that Tarim in eastern Yemen, the seat of the Shafi’i school within Sunni Islam, was run by a bunch of traditional old men and Dammaj was thus the only place for good studies in Yemen.
In Sa’da, there is animosity and the occasional violent clashes between the Dammaj community and the local tribes and residents, requiring the enclave to pay for its own local militia as protection. The fact that it is supposedly funded by the Wahhabi religious establishment does not make it any more popular, especially not with the intelligence community, which accuses it of teaching extremist Salafi Islamic doctrine.
One meets all kinds at the Officers’ Club.